Aesop. Vita & Fabellae, first Aldine edition, collation: a⁸, A⁸, B¹⁰, b⁸, c⁸, C⁸, D¹⁰, d⁸, e-h⁸, i⁶, k-?⁸, o⁴, 150 leaves, Greek and roman type, woodcut Aldine device on recto of first leaf, larger framed woodcut device on final verso, blank spaces for capitals, with printed guide letters, slightly browned and soiled in places, some bibliographical annotations on first front flyleaf, among others "Libri rarissimi exemplar pulcherrimum", pencil notes by Bernard Quaritch on rear pastedown, early 19th-century vellum, gilt-lettered green morocco spine label (chipped), folio (266 x 172mm.), Venice, Aldus Manutius, October 1505.

⁂ The rare first Aldine edition of the Fabulae, supplemented with a Latin translation and the fictitious life of Aesop ascribed to Planudes, likewise in Greek and Latin. "This edition may be considered among the rarer and more beautiful productions of the Aldine Press" (Dibdin, Introduction, I, p. 247). The volume also contains the text, in both languages, of the forty-three fables by the second-century writer Babrius (or Gabrias, as Aldus erroneously calls him), and the Greek text only of writings by Phurnutus or Cornutus, Palaephatus, and Heraclides Ponticus, along with the Hieroglyphica by Horapollo, the proverbs by Tarrhaeus and Didymus, and the Apologus Aesopi de Cassita apud Gellium, all of which appear here in their first editions: this Aldine edition is thus rightly defined by N. G. Wilson as "a most curious miscellany" (From Byzanthium to Italy, p. 143).

The Aldine Aesop follows the 1481 editio princeps printed in Milan by Bonus Accursius, but it includes five additional fables that had remained unpublished. The edition is the only work printed by Aldus to have parallel text in Latin and Greek, indicating the popularity of the Fables as a schoolbook during the Renaissance. The Greek and Latin text is interleaved to aid those readers who knew Latin but not Greek. The texts are also separable: the pages printed in Greek are numbered sequentially, and there are copies in which the Aesopus Graecus is found bound together without the Latin translation. The title-page points out this particular feature, stating that the Fables are presented "cum interpretatione latina, ita tamen ut separari a graeco possit pro unius cuiusque arbitrio".

Provenance: Henry Philip Hope (1774-1839; see Catalogue of the... library of Henry P. Hope, Esq...sold by auction, by Leigh and Sotheby..., London 1813, lot 1584, "Esopi Vita et Fabulae, Gr. very fair Venet. ap. Ald."; note on front flyleaf 'Hope's Sale 1813' £8.0.0.'); Porkington Library of John Ralph Ormsby-Gore, Lord Harlech (1816-1876; ex-libris on front pastedown); Kenneth Rapoport (ex-libris on front pastedown).

Literature: Adams A278; STC Italian 8; Renouard Alde, 49.6; Ahmanson-Murphy 93; Hoffmann I, p. 63; Staikos,

The Greek Editions of Aldus Manutius and his Greek Collaborators (1495-1515), New Castle, DE 2016, 46; N. G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy, Baltimore 1993, pp. 143-144.